Gallup Poll shows public turnaround in health care support

Nearly half of Americans give a thumbs-up to Congress’ passage of a healthcare reform bill last weekend, with 49% calling it “a good thing.” Republicans and Democrats have polar opposite reactions, with independents evenly split.

The findings, from a March 22 USA Today/Gallup poll conducted one day after the bill received a majority of votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, represent immediate reactions to the vote.

Americans’ emotional responses to the bill’s passage are more positive than negative — with 50% enthusiastic or pleased versus 42% angry or disappointed — and are similar to their general reactions.

Although much of the public debate over healthcare reform has been heated, barely a third of rank-and-file citizens express either enthusiasm (15%) or anger (19%) about the bill’s passage. However, only Democrats show greater enthusiasm than anger. Independents are twice as likely to be angry as enthusiastic, and Republicans 10 times as likely.

Bottom Line

Passage of healthcare reform was a clear political victory for President Obama and his allies in Congress. While it also pleases most of his Democratic base nationwide, it is met with greater ambivalence among independents and with considerable antipathy among Republicans. Whether these groups’ views on the issue harden or soften in the coming months could be crucial to how healthcare reform factors into this year’s midterm elections. Given that initial public reaction to Sunday’s vote is more positive than recent public opinion about passing a healthcare reform bill, it appears some softening has already occurred.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,005 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 22, 2010, as part of Gallup Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Polls conducted entirely in one day, such as this one, are subject to additional error or bias not found in polls conducted over several days.

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Comments

Now that it is the law of the land you will see many more people swing back to supporting health care reform once they begin to feel the benefits. Perhaps down the road it will one day transform into a true single payer system. The other half will continue to listen to Limbaugh and Faux news Beck, Hannity and those other nitwits preaching fears that Soviet tanks will soon be rolling across Kansas or some other such nonsense.

This is the poll I was referring to when I said you shouldn’t use it as it can’t be accurate. Any poll with a standard deviation above +/- 3 percent is considered unreliable by statisticians and the results should be thrown out. Ask any stats professor and they would probably question why this poll would be given so much weight by the media and politicians. That and anyone that has paid attention knows USA Today isn’t independent from government in their reporting.

For evidence, just look at the emotional reaction question. We know Democrats account for 30% of the population, Republicans 20%, and Independents 50% of the population. Yet this poll claims 50% of adults are “Enthusiastic or Pleased” even though majorities of both Independents and Republicans are “Disappointed, Angry, or have No Opinion.” Now how can that be unless they included the “No Opinion” folks as being for the measure?

I have to agree with you woody but I still believe the tide will turn favorably when folks begin receiving the benefits of this reform. Tax credits given to small businesses that provides coverage for their employees, closing the Medicare part D donut hole. In six months the enactment will no longer deny coverage to children with preexisting conditions (that one alone gets my vote). Allowing parents to keep their kids on their insurance plan until they turn 27. I have friends who have kids in college that are thrilled about that one. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage. In 2011 co-payments and deductibles for seniors will be eliminated for preventative care in the Medicare program. I’m not far from signing up for Medicare. I keep myself physically fit and I for one will like that new enactment. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick. I’ve see this happen to many times to good people because of a serious illness.

As always the survay says what they want it to say, just like eggs are not good for you this month then next month they are the sourse of many great things for you body…yeah right….I know what I know, not what THEY tell me to know….

You want to hear something funny, Back in 1993, when Republicans successfully obstructed Clinton’s attempt at Health Care reform, the Republicans forwarded their own plan. That’s right, the “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993″ a Republican drawn plan to address the burgeoning health care crisis for those who couldn’t get insurance through work or didn’t make enough to buy private insurance was very similar to the current bill. It included this same ‘mandate.’ Now we hear ‘Socialism’ or ‘Marxism’ or ‘Botulism’ and ‘taking our freedoms’ or whatever. All of this teariness over the Commerce Clause is a ruse, plain and simple. I could go on forever citing cases where the Commerce Clause was adjudicated at the highest levels and in opposite of how these teabagging regressives read the clause. Their arguments have no basis in law, neither in the grants of authority to Congress in Article I nor in limitations on that authority in the Bill of Rights, nor in the case law interpreting these provisions. In point, the Senate findings on this bill note, that the Supreme Court decades ago, in 1944, held that the business of insurance fell within Congress’ regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause. More specifically the court observed:

Perhaps no modern commercial enterprise directly affects so many persons in all walks of life as does the insurance business. Insurance touches the home, the family, and the occupation or the business of almost every persons in the United States. (U.S. v. Southeastern Underwriters Ass’n 322 U.S. 533(1944))

The Southeastern Underwriters Court’s description of the factual case for federal regulation of insurance current to 1940 could hardly be more consonant with Congress’ expanding federal regulation of health insurance in 2010.

This complaint of the constitutionality of the Health Care bil is also just a disingenuous argument and I’ll tell you why. Even the Holy Church of Regressives, the Federalist Society, has put out an issue paper on the subject acknowledging, “An ‘individual mandate’ to buy health insurance has been a component of most health care reform plans proposed(including republican plans) starting with Clinton in 1993…..during this lengthy period of spirited legal and policy disputes about health reform, the suggestion that the principal template for reform might be unconstitutional was NEVER HEARD until months into the congressional consideration of the current legislation.” Got that, in the 17 years we’ve been throwing around ideas about health care, no one ever had the temerity to argue this was illegal until the republicans started counting votes in 2009. That includes Bob Dole and many other Republicans who’ve endorsed ideas that are actually IN this bill. And I’m not even going to get into the specifics of the ‘inactivity’ claim violation of the commerce clause because this type of verbal gimmickry is not looked very highly upon in court, as I’m guessing we’ll soon see.

I’d also like to point out the fatal flaw in this argument about the mandate. One that really stops the argument at ground zero. Writen specifically into the bill, clearly and unequivocally, is a waiver to the states should they have conflicts with the bill. Specifically:

Sec. 1331. State flexibility to establish basic health programs for low-income individuals not eligible for Medicaid.
Sec. 1332. Waiver for State innovation.
Sec. 1333. Provisions relating to offering of plans in more than one State

The Bill clearly outline that States can pass their own laws, if they do not agree with the Federal bill. Oops…again, if you can meet the requirements of the waiver, you can negate the request for an individual mandate.

I’d also just like to finish with this, because I’m seeing this across the board from conservatives…….blatant hypocrisy…..and listen, I’m no democrat…..the tax the living heck out of everything and think the government needs to solve all our ills. .but this kind of thing really takes the cake and is just impossible to justify……For instance the Attorney General of Texas Greg Abbott, who is suing the Federal Government, was recently a strong proponent of mandating divorced parents to buy health insurance for their children. Read that again, Turns out, that Abbott strongly supported a law in Texas last year that requires divorced parents to purchase insurance for their kids, even if they prefer to pay for their medical expenses out of pocket.

Enough already. This bill certainly isn’t perfect, but it does give many more people access to health insurance, and contains many ideas that over the years were advocated by Republicans. Sheesh. You know, the Republicans have been in control of congress for 15 of the last 18 years and had the presidency for 8 of the last 10…….how’d things get so bad when they held all the cards for so long?

As I stated in another thread it simply boils down to this; It must be maddening to the republicans and their followers such as the baggers that this president will go down in history as the first Black president and as the first president to succeed in changing the direction of this nation’s for-profit health care system. It has nothing to do with the republicans being against reform, its just that they are not the ones doing the reforming.

It’s a logical fallacy to say that a poll of a thousand people speaks for 150 million people. It doesn’t. In reality, if you really could pull your head out of the sand, you would see that most of the country is appalled at everything that’s happening.